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| Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza in Ida Photo: Music Box Films |
The fourth edition of the Play Poland touring festival kicks off on Thursday, October 9.
The festival - which will visit Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Birmingham, Sunderland, Belfast and Aberfeldy - will celebrate the best of recent Polish cinema as well as hosting art exhibitions and short film showcases. Internationally, the festival also has a presence in Ottawa, New York and Oslo.
Among this year's feature films are Pawel Pawlikowski's multi-award winning Ida, about an orphaned novice nun who discovers a living relative and travels into her family's past. Other highlights include Life Feels Good (Chce sie zyc), Maciej Pieprzyca's retelling of the remarkable true story of a boy's struggle to communicate with others after being born with cerebral palsy. Featuring a standout performance from Dawid Ogrodnik as the central character Mateusz, Pieprzyca brings a clear-eyed intelligence to a story built on resilience and humour rather than schmaltz. Pieprzyca will be in attendance at the festival.
Other films in the line-up include Tomasz Woszczynski's Floating Skyscrapers (Plynace wiezowce) - about the flowering of gay identity in Catholic Poland - and psychological Hardkor Disko, directed by Krzysztof Skonieczny.
There will be short film showcases from the Krakow Film Foundation, Munk Studio, Lodz Film School and animation studio Se-Ma-For among others and exhibitions of Polish film posters and Through The Director's Eye - a photography show comprising photos from student directors.
The feature film line-up is as follows:
- Apnea
- Floating Skyscrapers
- Hardkor Disko
- Ida
- It Looks Pretty From A Distance
- Kebab & Horoscope
- Life Feels Good
- Papusza
- Parasite
- The Last Floor
For further details of the festival and screening times, visit the official site.
